John Rapley is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail. He is an author and academic whose books include Why Empires Fall and Twilight of the Money Gods.

With the U.S. government shutdown interrupting the release of most official data, we’re left fumbling in the dark when assessing the American economy. And when we assemble a picture from private data sources and the Federal Reserve banks, which fund their own operations and so aren’t affected by the government shutdown, what we obtain leaves things no clearer.

Some data suggests the U.S. economy is booming, but some equally suggests it’s heading into a recession. It’s a coin toss which is right – a nightmare for investors, but also for the Federal Reserve Board, which must decide whether to stimulate a sluggish economy or restrain an overheating one. Pick the wrong horse, and the losses could be severe.

The Atlanta Federal Reserve conducts a nowcast that currently estimates the economy to be growing at more than 3 per cent a year. Household demand also seems to have picked up strongly in the past few months, leading some observers to conclude that the sharp economic downturn early in the new year was just a blip.

© The Globe and Mail